Big Tech all over D.C. patent war

The Coalition for Patent Fairness talks up the importance of innovation. The Main Street Patent Coalition says it’s standing up for the little guy. The Partnership for American Innovation harps on job growth, and the Innovation Alliance chats up small inventors.

What they’re not trumpeting: These groups are political agents of Google, Apple, Microsoft, Qualcomm and a veritable army of other deep-pocketed D.C. tech players.

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Silicon Valley has plenty on the line as Congress returns from recess and resumes its work to mediate the patent wars raging among tech companies and so-called patent trolls — entities that threaten lawsuits in the hopes of extracting settlements or licensing fees. A key reform bill already has cleared the House, and another is forging ahead in the Senate. The flurry of activity has catalyzed the tech industry’s well-stocked Washington players to commit cash and clout to the fight.

Google, for one, seeks to grow the government’s ability to toss bad software patents. To make its point, it has bankrolled multiple groups, commissioned widely cited studies and spent more than $3.8 million so far this year in part to lobby for its prized changes in patent rules.

Apple, Microsoft and IBM agree there’s a need to stop frivolous lawsuits, but they’re major patent holders themselves. To protect those assets, they’ve actively lobbied, too. The tech giants even launched a coalition this month led by the former leader of the government’s patent office.

And diehard reform foes led by Qualcomm have channeled cash to a group devoted to warding off the most ambitious of patent reforms. Intellectual Ventures, a major patent litigant, is just starting to lobby — and its top executives this election cycle have donated big to Senate Democrats and Republicans.

The patent war in Washington mirrors the battles Google, Apple, Cisco, Samsung and others are waging in the courtroom — sometimes against one another. The tech set may stand united against pharmaceutical giants and other patent-heavy industries, which want to retain the law as it is. But that’s the extent to which many tech companies agree, and the result has been a messy fight.

Google, Samsung, Cisco, Oracle and others have united in the Coalition for Patent Fairness, a nonprofit that formed in time for lawmakers’ 2011 overhaul of the country’s patent rules. The group aims to modernize the patent system, and it has fought hard over the past year for changes to curb incentives for patent trolls.

The group spent more than $530,000 on lobbying last year and shelled out $240,000 more in the first quarter of 2014, according to federal records released this week. That’s in addition to millions of dollars that Cisco, Oracle and the coalition’s other members spent to lobby individually for patents and other policy issues in 2013. Google alone boasted 40 outside lobbyists at 11 firms working generally on intellectual property issues, according to its first-quarter reports.

To make its point, the coalition has unleashed a torrent of letters and statements — but it’s also quietly tried to raise allies on Capitol Hill. Before Sens. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and Rob Portman (R-Ohio) urged the Senate in a March letter to advance patent reform, the Coalition for Patent Fairness had worked the halls of Congress, helping to shop around the missive in a bid to collect signatures, according to congressional sources.

One of the key pieces of evidence in the lawmakers’ note: a study about patent trolls from the Boston University School of Law — an oft-cited paper on the Hill, and one “supported by funds” from the coalition as revealed in a footnote.

“As the patent troll problem has grown beyond the tech industry, we have been joined in the fight by many others,” said Matt Tanielian, executive director of the Coalition for Patent Fairness. “The elements for successful legislation exist in the Senate today.”

Its key ally, the Main Street Patent Coalition, similarly has been making the rounds. That group has been calling for litigation reform on behalf of some of the Beltway’s most moneyed players — from the National Restaurant Association to the National Retail Federation. Google has an indirect hand in that effort as well, as a member of two of its many participating trade groups. And those groups have fought alongside existing trade organizations like the Consumer Electronics Association. And CEA has plastered Washington newspapers, including POLITICO, with advertisements featuring giant green trolls — and on several occasions, it’s even hired actors to dress up in troll costumes.

“I get why the companies are all fighting like crazy over this,” said Michael Meehan, manager for the Main Street patent group. “Their business models are dependent on patents, and everybody has a different stake in the patent system.”

Microsoft, Apple and IBM, meanwhile, don’t share Google’s position on the future of software patents. Each of those companies has a sizable patent portfolio of its own. And each company has waged its own war in Washington over the future of the patent system.

In a bid to protect their lucrative patent assets, the three companies joined this April to launch the Partnership for American Innovation, and they tapped former USPTO chief David Kappos as their leader. The group includes Pfizer and others, and it isn’t unified even within its own ranks on how to reform the patent system. Instead, the coalition is supposed to be a public relations campaign to combat the likes of Google. Its website features an entire page highlighting how its members rely on “patent protection” to produce the “technology of tomorrow.”

In its own words, PAI plans to “create and look for opportunities to reinforce the positive value of patents,” a spokeswoman said. Kappos, in a statement, stressed he plans to leave the traditional Beltway lobbying to company members.

Otherwise, Apple and Microsoft have pressed the Hill on reform, working more indirectly through trade groups like BSA — an organization to which Microsoft contributed more than $1 million last year, according to the company’s financial documents. Microsoft also tasked more than 29 outside lobbyists to work on IP and patents, it disclosed in its lobbying forms.

At times, though, the lobbying frenzy has created even stranger bedfellows.

When the George Mason University School of Law unveiled its intellectual-property research hub last year — a new center that’s been churning out pro-patent research — it touted the support of Microsoft, Qualcomm and Intellectual Ventures. But those companies historically haven’t even been on the same side of the patent fight. Microsoft seeks limited patent reforms; Qualcomm has fought against many of the Senate’s plans; and Intellectual Ventures, a major player in patent legal battles, has battled aggressively against Internet companies like Google.

Still, Intellectual Ventures registered its own political action committee this February, after a year when it spent more than $1 million lobbying in Washington. Its latest lobbying report, filed Monday, reflects another $350,000 in influence spending. And its executives last year contributed more than $30,000 to the campaign arms of Senate Democrats and Republicans, records show.

Qualcomm on its own donated another $2 million in 2013 to Northwestern University, explicitly to “fund research that will investigate the role of patents in incentivizing technological innovation,” according to the school. The chipmaker also committed millions of dollars to D.C. lobbying — partly through an outside firm with five, full-time patent lobbyists — all the while serving as a key driver behind the Innovation Alliance.

An aggressive outfit, the Innovation Alliance spent $120,000 on lobbying in the first three months of 2014, according to federal records, double the amount it spent in the final quarter of 2013. At the same time, it has launched euphemistic messaging campaigns like SavetheInventor.com. That website showcases local inventors who could be affected by patent changes. What it doesn’t showcase: its ties to Qualcomm and other alliance members, like Tessera and Dolby Laboratories, which also are major patent holders. The alliance, though, saidits opponents are the source of the most egregious subterfuge.

“Companies for whom patents are often a cost are using patent trolls as a foil for a debate that many believe is more about weakening patents generally than about stopping abusive conduct,” said Brian Pomper, the group’s executive director.